We’ve all got some burdens on our shoulders as content marketers. With all the clutter out there, not only do you have to create content that is constantly standing out, but you have to make sure that your readers are interacting with it. This is where interactive content comes in.

You’ve read blogs on top of blogs about it. You’ve attended webinars about it. You’ve even taken the journey yourself through a few experiences of another brand’s content and thought to yourself, “I can totally make this happen for my brand.”

But then you freeze. Where do you start? How do you know what to do? Don’t worry—we’ve got your back!

On this week’s Ask Audrey, ion’s Director of Account Development, Asa Hochhauser, joins Audrey to give you the advice you need to launch that very first interactive content experience and how you can make sure it’s a success. Check out the video below!

[Transcript below]

Interviewer:

Is there any advice that you would give to marketers who haven't launched an interactive experience yet?

Audrey Ross:

Well yes, I think the first piece of advice I have would be to definitely launch some interactive content. I think at this stage if you aren't exploring interactive content or using some type of interactive content as part of your marketing strategy, you're actually a bit behind your peers. Most marketers are creating interactive pieces for different stages of their funnel. So definitely, if you haven't really thoughtfully considered how to bring this into your marketing program, that would be my first bit of advice, is to really look at how you can bring some valuable pieces in.

But that said, don't panic. If you are looking to get started and create something new or explore interactive content, really look at, don't try to create the most complex, most robust piece of interactive content first. Is there a minimum viable product? That's actually a term that is used in the software industry. It means, what is the most valuable, usable, helpful tool that you can create and build from that? What is your MVP piece of interactive content that you can launch?

Explore where you have gaps, either in results or gaps in your data. Maybe you can create one to two very simple, easy to get live tools that can help give you some lift and give you some results, specifically around those gaps. I think that would my biggest advice to get started.

Asa Hochhauser:

Love it. Yeah, I would echo what Audrey said. Obviously get started, get to it. It's a necessity now in today's content marketing environment and how people are consuming content. It's important to be doing interactive content.

But once you've decided to go forward with it, I think the big piece of it is, start with some sort of strategy behind. What are you trying to accomplish? What's the end goal that you're looking to achieve by creating interactive content? That will help you decide how what kind of MVP are you going to develop from there.

From there, marketers are often, "How am I going to get interactive content built?" You might race out to get a tool or spend a lot of time on development resources. Getting it done is important but I think even more importantly is understanding how to get it done. Once you have that idea and the strategy, how are you actually going to take the content you have and put it into an interactive format?

I would say, rely on someone that's done it before. Don't try and recreate the wheel. Have someone that has built out interactive content before help you, because even if you have a tool of the best developer in the world, if you don't have some level of expertise there, you're going to have a big challenge of pulling that content together and getting it in the right format. So don't go at it alone.